In recent days, some members of the conservative media have seen signs of the Apocalypse in the escalated conflicts in the Middle East and Asia. Pat Robertson has considered the possibility but has seemed to reject it, while columnist Hal Lindsey has simply asserted: "Now Armageddon looms large before us." But as recent reports on CNN and in USA Today attest, conservatives are not the only media figures to raise the question of whether current events are a sign of the "End Times."

While a guest on Janet Parshall's syndicated radio show, Thomas E. Woods Jr. -- a founding member of the neo-Confederate League of the South, classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group" -- misleadingly cited Thomas Jefferson's advocacy of castrating men caught engaging in "acts against nature." He also endorsed an online college espousing the views of the right-wing John Birch Society as an appropriate educational tool for those who want to avoid schools that are "brainwashing" children.

Fox News' Brit Hume, John Gibson, and Jim Angle, as well as nationally syndicated radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Janet Parshall, continued to ignore conclusive assertions of intelligence officials that the degraded chemical munitions found in Iraq and hyped by Sen. Rick Santorum and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra were not, in fact, in the category of "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. was looking for at the time of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Several television and radio commentators have either hosted debates or openly questioned what they claim are the insidiously progressive goals of the award-winning film Brokeback Mountain, yet many of the same commentators openly admit they have not seen it.

On December 7, President-elect Donald Trump named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Media should take note of Pruitt’s climate science denial, his deep ties to the energy industries he will be charged with regulating, and his long record of opposition to EPA efforts to reduce air and water pollution and combat climate change.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked -- or considered -- nearly a dozen people who have worked in right-wing media, including talk radio, right-wing news sites, Fox News, and conservative newspapers, to fill his administration. And Trump himself made weekly guest appearances on Fox for a number of years while his vice president used to host a conservative talk radio show.